The Land of Contrasts eBook

III

Lights and Shadows of American Society

By “society” I do not mean that limited
body which, whether as the Upper Ten Thousand of London
or as the Four Hundred of New York, usually arrogates
the title. Such narrowness of definition seems
peculiarly out of place in the vigorous democracy of
the West. By society I understand the great body
of fairly well-educated and fairly well-mannered people,
whose means and inclinations lead them to associate
with each other on terms of equality for the ordinary
purposes of good fellowship. Such people, not
being fenced in by conventional barriers and owning
no special or obtrusive privileges, represent much
more fully and naturally the characteristic national
traits of their country; and their ways and customs
are the most fruitful field for a comparative study
of national character. The daughters of dukes
and princes can hardly be taken as typical English
girls, since the conditions of their life are so vastly
different from those of the huge majority of the species—­conditions
which deny a really natural or normal development
to all but the choicest and strongest souls.
So the daughter of a New York multimillionaire, who
has been brought up to regard a British duke or an
Italian prince as her natural partner for life, does
not look out on the world through genuinely American
spectacles, but is biassed by a point of view which
may be somewhat paradoxically termed the “cosmopolitan-exclusive.”
As Mr. Henry James puts it: “After all,
what one sees on a Newport piazza is not America;
it is the back of Europe.”

There are, however, reasons special to the United
States why we should not regard the “Newport
set” as typical of American society. Illustrious
foreign visitors fall not unnaturally into this mistake;
even so keen a critic as M. Bourget leans this way,
though Mr. Bryce gives another proof of his eminent
sanity and good sense by his avoidance of the tempting
error. But, as Walt Whitman says, “The pulse-beats
of the nation are never to be found in the sure-to-be-put-forward-on-such-occasions
citizens.” European fashionable society,
however unworthy many of its members may be, and however
relaxed its rules of admission have become, has its
roots in an honourable past; its theory is fine; not
all the big names of the British aristocracy
can be traced back to strong ales or weak (Lucy) Waters.
Even those who desire the abolition of the House of
Peers, or look on it, with Bagehot, as “a vapid
accumulation of torpid comfort,” cannot deny
that it is an institution that has grown up naturally
with the country, and that it is only now (if even
now) that it is felt with anything like universality
to be an anomaly. The American society which
is typified by the four hundred of New York, the society
which marries its daughters to English peers, is in
a very different position. It is of mushroom growth
even according to American standards; it has theoretically